“Are you a customer? Take your time and look around!”
【Patch in progress. 82%】
“The moon is bright. The liquor tastes good as well. Bring me something to eat with it, Akkun.”
【Patch in progress. 83%】
“Get out of my workshop at once! This is my family’s home!”
【Patch in progress. 84%】
“How long are you planning to keep living off me, Akkun? Are you not twenty-five this year?”
【Patch in progress. 85%】
“Welcome to the finest Potion Workshop in Arche. We deal only in the highest-quality goods.”
“Please stop.”
“Stop what? I need to make a living too, do I not?”
“Master, it’s me.”
“Akkun, where have you been wandering around?”
Old man, I never left this spot.
There was no point in arguing.
Golden had been reduced to a puppet that recited predetermined lines depending on the ‘type’ of dialogue I used.
After identifying those types, I had conducted several experiments.
Thanks to that, Golden no longer seemed to be randomly changing from one moment to the next.
“Old man, have you eaten?”
When I spoke to him normally like this—
“How am I supposed to eat unless you prepare the food?”—he responded like the old man I knew.
“May I purchase some Potions?”
When I addressed him awkwardly, as though I were a customer or an outsider—
“As many as you like. Provided you have the money.”
—Golden responded like a merchant.
“I’m going to kill the Players.”
When I expressed my resentment toward them, drew the dagger at my waist, released my mana, or otherwise behaved like a murderer—
“So you are one of those red bastards! You disgusting son of a bitch, get out of here!”
—Golden became hostile as though he were facing his mortal enemy.
And finally.
I had openly displayed the wedding ring I wore on my middle finger to see how he would react.
‘He did not even twitch.’
He did not appear to recognize the ring.
His eyes were clouded as though covered in fog.
That was how I knew.
At last, I was able to accept it.
‘His soul is gone.’
Considering how he moved like a puppet even when I behaved according to my Character Profile, that was the only possible answer.
What I had to do next was clear.
THUD!
I entered my room.
There was a bed, a desk, and several books.
Aside from those, it was a dull room containing nothing at all.
I sat on the hard bed and steadied my breathing.
‘……I just have to bring him back.’
I had to revive his soul.
He had not been dead for long.
It had to be lingering somewhere near the workshop.
However, no matter how thoroughly I searched my memories, I knew no method of summoning a soul.
That was only natural.
I was an Apothecary, not a shaman.
Ultimately, there was only one thing I could rely on for now.
‘Magic.’
That repulsive magic the female Player had used.
The repulsive magic that had forcibly raised a corpse whose body had already collapsed and controlled it like an extension of her own limbs.
Could I use that magic in reverse?
Perhaps there was a way to place a new soul into someone who still possessed a body but lacked only a soul.
‘It is worth trying.’
I looked at the wall and spoke.
“Hey, Inventory.”
The air between my eyes and the wall warped slightly, like a heat haze.
“You are there, aren’t you?”
RIIIIIP-
As though it had been waiting, the Inventory appeared and opened its enormous mouth.
I swallowed and put a little distance between us before peering inside.
If I remembered correctly, its stomach definitely contained a phrase identical to that ‘incantation.’
It was the incantation the female Player had shouted when Aunt Mari rose from the ground and destroyed the rosemary field…….
※Skill Book List※
【Defensive Stance】
【Power Strike】
【Warrior’s Cry】
【Limit Break】
【Necromancy】
【Raise the Dead】
【Poison-Coated】
【Corpse Explosion】
There it was.
Among the countless items piled up like a mountain, I saw the words ‘Raise the Dead’ under the list of Skill Books.
The nearby entry labeled ‘Necromancy’ also caught my attention.
Perhaps it was magic related to souls.
‘But what does Skill Book mean?’
Was it some kind of percussion instrument that had to be struck with a club?
Very well, then I would strike it.
If I kept striking it, something would eventually open.
“Give me Raise the Dead and Necromancy.”
THUD, THUD-
Two pitch-black books fell before me in succession.
Both were approximately two finger joints thick.
The titles Necromancy and Raise the Dead were written on their covers.
‘So a Skill Book really is a book…… Is it not far too thick?’
It had been a long time since I had felt intimidated by a book.
Could I truly finish reading both of them before the patch was completed?
I was not confident that I could finish even one.
Moreover, both were books about magic.
The pages would be filled with concepts and terminology I knew nothing about. There was no way I could understand all of it in the little time I had left.
I could manipulate mana, but I knew absolutely nothing about magic.
The idea that someone like me could suddenly learn magic was absurd.
However, this was not a question of whether I could do it.
I had to do it.
I firmly pressed the corners of my eyes to ease their fatigue.
‘Please, let me possess some talent as a Mage…….’
With that desperate prayer, I reached toward the book titled Raise the Dead.
【Would you like to learn the skill? Y/N】
At that moment, the Guide displayed a strange message.
‘What does it mean by asking whether I want to learn the skill?’
I had to read it before I could learn it.
However, the cover would not open.
No matter how much strength I used—even when I infused myself with mana and pulled at both sides hard enough to tear the book in half—it maintained its shape like a solid gold ingot.
There was still a reaction.
Whenever I touched the book, the screen before me trembled.
‘It wants me to do something with this before it will let me read the book.’
Even learning something had to be this difficult…… I no longer had the energy to curse.
【Would you like to learn this skill? Y/N】
I examined the screen carefully.
Unlike the other screens, this one appeared three-dimensional.
The letters Y and N protruded in particular.
Only those two letters were flashing brightly.
‘Am I supposed to press one?’
Perhaps they were choices.
But was there any reason for me to move my hand?
“I’ll learn Raise the Dead.”
As I always had, I stated my decision aloud.
The screen merely trembled again.
“Then I’ll postpone it.”
BRRR-
“Can you not hear me?”
BRRR-
The screen continued to shake.
‘Why is that bastard Guide suddenly pretending to be deaf?’
I could just tell it aloud.
That had always worked before, so why was it suddenly acting capriciously?
‘It wants me to press the screen before I can read the book? Fine.’
I stared at Y and N.
‘Fuck, I have no idea.’
There was no way to know which character meant ‘yes.’
I had never seen either of them before in my life.
My despair soon turned into fear.
What if pressing the one that meant ‘no’ caused the Skill Book to disappear?
‘……It cannot disappear.’
My right hand trembled as I reached toward the screen.
‘Damn it. I should have tested this on one of the less important Skill Books first…….’
It was too late for regret.
In the end, I could only guess.
At a time like this, all I could trust was my intuition.
I stared at the two letters.
Y and N.
What did they mean?
For one thing, Y resembled a piece of provocative underwear.
Should I press that one, then?
Would something incredible, intense, and dizzying…… happen?
SMACK!
I slapped myself across the face.
No matter how I considered it, that was the wrong approach.
Think again.
From the beginning…… Did Y resemble a fork in the road?
That seemed more plausible than before.
Then was N the path that returned to where it began?
Suddenly, N began to feel like the correct answer.
There were no shortcuts to learning, so perhaps it meant, ‘Press me if you wish to learn everything through the proper, old-fashioned method.’
In that case, the forked path must have meant, ‘There are many paths to learning, so give up on this book.’
There was nothing particularly unreasonable about that interpretation.
No matter how I looked at it, a fork in the road did not appear to signify ‘the acquisition of knowledge.’
‘Good.’
I immediately extended a finger toward N……
【Patch in progress. 88%】
……but stopped just before touching it.
I was suddenly uncertain whether relying on an emotional interpretation was wise.
The System and the Guide.
Those tactless bastards displayed messages whenever I became immersed in grief or anger.
Now the deranged bastards even controlled my emotions through Mental Stability Correction.
There was no possibility that trash like them possessed emotions.
Even if they did, those emotions would undoubtedly be horribly warped and twisted.
‘……N still feels like the answer.’
But I only felt that way because I was human.
I could not approach this with common sense.
I had to think in a more inhuman manner.
Like the Guide.
Like the System.
‘Or like a Player.’
I had to behave like them to gain an advantage in this world.
I pressed Y.
【You have learned the skill!】
So this had been the correct answer after all.
I smiled triumphantly and reached for the book’s cover.
“……Aaaaaaargh!”
My entire body convulsed and twisted as my vision went dark.
SCREEEEEECH! SCREECH! SCREEEEEEEEEECH!
A horrific sound, like a ghost being fried in oil, rang directly through my brain.
SIZZLE-SIZZLE-SIZZLE-SIZZLE-
My head felt as though it were burning, as if boiling oil were flowing like rivers through every fold of my brain.
Perhaps the ghost floating in that oil was scraping its nails across my brain again and again and again. A splitting, tearing headache struck without pause.
Faced with sensations and pain I had never experienced before, I could not even scream.
I could not move my mouth.
I could not move so much as a fingertip.
I was no longer inside the workshop.
I was somewhere else entirely.
Beneath the dim moonlight, atop a damp hill of soil, among gravestones clustered as thickly as dandelion seeds, I inhabited the vision of a grave robber holding a shovel.
Hundreds of corpses lay scattered across the earthen hill.
They had not come from the graves.
They were freshly killed.
Each corpse had one part of its body caved in.
The grave robber’s shovel was soaked in blood.
It was not difficult to imagine what had happened.
Then—
AAAAAAH- AAAAAAAAH-
The hollow cries of the dead filled my ears.
The smell of old grave soil, blood, and rotting corpses invaded my nose.
A bone-chilling cold crawled across my skin.
Together, they overwhelmed my five senses.
Standing in the center of that revolting massacre, the grave robber began digging into the graves one by one with an indifferent expression.
He was quite literally eating the corpses along with the soil.
He did not discriminate by age, gender, race, or species.
He took exactly one bite of either flesh or bone from every one of them.
Then he sampled the corpses scattered nearby as well, not merely the dead buried inside the graves.
I could not taste them, but their repulsive textures spread vividly across my mouth and tongue.
I wanted to vomit everything in my mouth immediately, but the grave robber would not allow it.
Instead, he smacked his lips with satisfaction.
Then he struck the ground with his shovel.
THUD, THUUD, THUD.
The earthen hill shook with every strike.
Clumps of soil congealed with blood leaped vigorously into the air as though dancing.
【Raise the Dead】
His dry voice echoed across the hill.
The corpses beneath the gravestones and those sprawled across the dirt—the ones from which the grave robber had taken a single bite—staggered to their feet.
My soul slowly drifted away from the grave robber.
Just as I was about to see his face—
“GAAAAASP……!”
I staggered upright.
It felt as though I had been forced to experience the memories of the first caster sealed within the Skill Book.
Or perhaps they had been the primordial memories of the magic itself.
As soon as the experience ended, the headache disappeared as though it had never existed.
The images, noises, and sensations that had filled my mind all vanished.
However, everything about Raise the Dead had been engraved into my mind.
‘……This is not it. This cannot be it.’
All strength drained from my body.
I collapsed onto the bed and stared at the rotting wooden ceiling.
Raise the Dead—this ‘skill’—was not a technique of life.
It followed a path entirely opposite to Apothecary Crafting, which repaired what was damaged and revived what was fading.
Could it revive a soul?
Of course it had no such function.
Raise the Dead was nothing more than a technique created by a monster who devoured corpses so that he could mock and defile them.
Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting, and disgusting again.
I had learned something so revolting.
I hated myself for having resolved, even for a single moment, to use it on Golden.
I had thought so only because I knew nothing.
But now that I knew everything about the skill, I could not help sinking into a terrible mire of self-loathing.
【Patch in progress. 87%】
And yet, barely any time had actually passed.
The patch’s progress still remained at eighty-seven percent.
‘……I do not want to experience anything like that again.’
That was what my heart wanted.
However, I had no choice.
The golden ring on my right hand.
That damned……
……ring was pleading with me.
It seemed to be begging me not to give up and not to collapse.
So the ring was not my salvation, but my curse.
Even so, this was the path I had chosen.
There had been only two choices, but I had unquestionably been the one to choose this one.
I took several ragged breaths and extended a trembling hand toward the other Skill Book lying on the floor.
【Necromancy】
Please.
Please let the answer be inside this one…….
【Would you like to learn this skill? Y/N】
Of my own free will, I crawled into hell.